Ruger is saying that the shape and appearance of the 10/22 are a 'trademark' and T/C's copy is too much of a copy.
Ah. This utter bovine excrement of an excuse again. Some fifteen years ago I founded a company for manufacturing vintage design furniture to original hand-made specifications, as the designer intended, because all copies touted as "original" by license holders have cut so many corners in manufacturing processes that even the nicest, most expensive ones were far from Original.
Lo and behold, the big names in the industry lobbied legislators to re-instate IPR to appearance, even when designs are several decades old and the designer has passed away long time ago. This enabled them to start legal action against manufacturers of products that were far closer to original design, hand made, of extremely high quality and even cheaper than their "original" ones, that only had an artificial license going for them.
For instance, there's no such thing as Ludvig Mies van Der Rohe "Barcelona" chair, built to original specifications, on the market anymore. In 1930's there was, and again between 2004 and 2007 when I single-handedly brought it back.
Now Ruger seems to be willing to exploit the same corporate-tailored draconian laws to eliminate competition.
Sorry about off-topic, I've been a bit too involved in arbitrary "appearance" "trademark" controversy to not to dwell into principles why all this lunacy is possible nowadays.
The pride of owning a Ruger is bound to be on decline. How about just building quality guns and selling them on their own merits instead of suing others who do?